Wednesday, March 18, 2009

BAH, HUMBUG

No, it’s not that time of the year. Not yet.

My curmudgeonly declamation is a response to all of the current media-driven frenzy concerning the supposedly deepening recession. Yes, the economy is fuct. Yes, Wall Street has responded as it always does to bad news: by a general Fire Sale, thus magnifying the impact of the problem.

And, of course, the politicos have had a Hopey-Changey Field Day, throwing money at the problem. It’s like trying to put out a burning apartment building by tossing live babies into the flames. It not only does not put out the fire, it results in a lot of screaming and yelling.

A lot of that bailout money, it seems, is going to pay for executive bonuses: viz., at AIG. Why any executive should be earning a single red Bonus Cent when his company’s affairs are so desperate that they have to resort to accepting infusions of Guvvamint Cash, is beyond my feeble capacity to reckon.

But I’m beginning to suspect it’s all bullshit.

Look: We were in Columbia, Maryland this past weekend. At two separate shopping malls, people were so thick on the ground, you could barely turn around. Parking was so hard to come by, they were taking cars and stacking ’em two and three layers high... or so it seemed.

Saturday evening we attended a bowling party at Dave & Buster’s over by Arundel Mills. Good Gawd Awmighty, I have never seen so many people crammed into so small a space. D&B’s was so densely packed with human flesh, I believe that the resulting gravitic field was actually able to bend light. And D&B’s is no cheap place. In addition to a thousand beeping and flashing catchpenny engines to take your money, there are the overpriced food and drinks. You can’t spend much time there without a wad of cash, is all I’m saying - and there were plenty people spending plenty of time there.

This does not make mention of the monster Egyptian Temple-themed movie theatre multimegaplex three doors down, with fifty-foot tall pillars supporting a vast, cavernous roof. A place to see a frickin’ movie, fercryinoutloud, not a Heavy Goods Manufactory.

Over the course of the weekend, I also could not help but notice that people were still happy to shell out $1.39 a bottle for water. Water! Without even any carbonic acid and/or caramel coloring and high fructose corn syrup to pep it up! Tap water, on the other hand, is still free - and they couldn’t give it away.

So I figure that the Big Bad Recession is a myth, a myth manufactured by the Mainstream Media in collusion with the idiots on Crapitol Hill. Because if people are still pissing money away on bottled water and Fun Time at Dave & Buster’s, they can’t be all that desperate. Yet.